James Byrd’s murder shows why Confederate holiday should end

Mylinda Byrd Washington, 66, left, and Louvon Byrd Harris, 61, hold up photographs of their brother James Byrd Jr., who in 1998 was lynched in Jasper, Texas, by racists who chained him to a pickup truck and dragged him to death.

Photo: Juan Lozano, STF / Associated Press

The execution Wednesday of John William King for the 1998 lynching of James Byrd Jr., who was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to death, won’t bring the victim back to life. It won’t erase the heartbreak of the loved ones Byrd left behind. Neither will it remove the stain that the atrocity left on the East Texas town of Jasper, where the murder occurred. So, what purpose will King’s execution serve?

King’s death by injection occurred less than two weeks after a white man was arrested for setting fire to three black churches in Louisiana. The proximity of those events makes one wonder if race relations have changed since Byrd was lynched. Clearly there have been improvements in the past 21 years, but the FBI says hate crimes in America, most of them motivated by race or ethnicity, have increased. Few compare to what happened to Byrd.

While walking home late at night, he accepted a ride from three white guys in a pickup. The driver was Shawn Berry. The other two, King and Lawrence Russell Brewer, had been members of a skinhead prison gang called the Confederate Knights of America. They attacked Byrd, beat him into submission, wrapped one end of a chain around his ankles, the other end to the truck’s ball, and dragged him for three miles. Part of Byrd’s body was found near a cemetery; the rest a mile and a half up the road.

It wasn’t hard for police to find Byrd’s assailants. They clumsily left evidence where it was easily found. All three men were convicted of capital murder. Brewer was executed in 2011. Berry, who cooperated with authorities, was sentenced to life in prison and will be eligible for parole in 2038. King’s fate was set after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-minute appeal Wednesday evening.

King was a walking, talking advertisement for racism. His many body tattoos included a black man hanging from a tree, a robed Ku Klux Klansman, a swastika, and the words “Aryan Pride.” Prosecutors said King was as an “exalted cyclops” of the Confederate Knights of America and recruited white troops for an imagined race war.

Did King’s execution have a purpose other than vengeance? Executions usually don’t. Research has shown them to also be poor deterrents to future crimes. Capital punishment has more to do with retribution than justice. But King’s execution could be different. That’s if his story of unbridled racism could be used to bury the misguided notion that memorials and traditions honoring the Confederate States of America should be treated with reverence.

Klan and skinhead groups use emblems that link them to the Confederacy for a specific reason: Like them, the rebel states were united by racism. Failing to preserve slavery, the former Confederate states continued to treat black people as inferior to whites by enacting segregation laws that stayed on the books into the 1960s.

Many African-Americans and others view commemorations of the Confederacy as endorsements of the historical subjugation of black people. That doesn’t mean other folks can’t be proud of their ancestors. They were fighting for a racist cause, but most were soldiers, not murderers like King and two others who killed Byrd. That pride, however, shouldn’t be endorsed by state governments whose citizens also include people who aren’t descendants of Confederate soldiers and sympathizers.

The State Preservation Board has finally removed the plaque erected in the Capitol in 1959 by the “Children of the Confederacy,” which absurdly asserts the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. The next logical step would be to stop celebrating a Confederate Heroes Day in the same state that celebrates Juneteenth, the worldwide celebration that began in Texas to mark the day slavery finally ended in all of America.

State employees can currently take Confederate Heroes Day off at taxpayers’ expense. Taxpayers who don’t want to celebrate defenders of slavery shouldn’t have to pay for that holiday.

Jacob Hale, who as a 13-year-old urged the Legislature in 2015 to abolish the Texas holiday established in 1973 to honor Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures, is back at it. Now 17, Hale has written state leaders a letter reminding them that “many Texans do not find the actions of Confederates heroic.” Maybe this time they will listen to him.

Rep. Jarvis Johnson, D-Houston, has authored a bill that would end Confederate Heroes Day, which has been sitting in the State Affairs Committee since Feb. 26. Passing the legislation might help persuade the eight other states with holidays honoring the Confederacy to follow Texas’ lead. The Legislature should pass the bill in the name of James Byrd Jr. Let the execution of his murderer serve as the catalyst. That would serve a purpose much more meaningful than vengeance.